Monday, 15 July 2013

Poetry in Dance - Lakshmi Vishwanathan

Most of our dance repertoire is poetry in song. We seldom get to read
them just for their poetic beauty .We read them only when we are
researching new texts for dance. Language skills are needed for this
exercise. Poems when set to suitable tunes should inspire lyrical dance.

When I first encountered some lovely poems from ancient Tamil translated
into poetic English I was excited enough to make Girish Karnad read
some as I danced to the melodies of a sitar under a starlit sky in the
Cholamandal artists village near Chennai. This was way back in 1976 and
the book of translations was the famous Interior Landscape by A.K.
Ramanujan. The last time I met him was in Hyderabad airport. A genial
and unassuming man he told me, “I am coming out with something of
particular interest to you. That book is When God is Customer.” I found
his translations of many of my padams delightful and used them often to
introduce my dance. Instead of the usual introductions, I just read out
the poems and needless to say it was more than effective. Bhagirati, a
theatre person and friend read some of them when I premiered an entire
evening of padams titled HRDAYA VILAPAM. I think we enjoyed the evening
as much as the audience.

2 comments:

I am agree with the article...i spend much time in India , since my origin is italian...the skill of knowing hindi and hurdu has allowed me to enter in the essence of poetry..thanks for this article and blogrosella fanellikathak dancer and teacher